When a mobile station (MS) is engaged in a call, the MS may periodically monitor a strength of pilot channels associated with nearby base stations subsystems (BSSs) or radio access networks (RANs) and report the signal strength measurements back to a BSS or RAN serving the MS. The signal strength reports may be transmitted by the MS when the measurements are made or, in order to save battery strength and bandwidth, may be transmitted by the MS only when the measured signal strengths fall beneath a predetermined threshold.
Such a reporting system is designed to facilitate a handoff of an MS. Such a reporting system is not designed to facilitate, and does not facilitate, an efficient detection of flaws in system design or configuration that may result in problems such as areas of poor radio frequency (RF) coverage or areas of excessive channel assignment or call setup latencies. For example, mere reports of measured signal strength will not necessarily indicate sleeping cells, coverage holes, sub-optimal access network configurations, and the like. Furthermore, the signal strengths measured by the MSs are not necessarily the system parameters that are most useful for optimizing system performance, and the BSS or RAN that typically terminate such reports are not the best network elements for optimizing system performance based on such reports. In addition, the periodic measuring and reporting of signal strengths by MSs engaged in a call do not provide an efficient system for gauging an impact on system coverage of a change in a configuration of an access network, that is, a change in access network parameters.
As a result, in order to detect areas of poor RF coverage or an impact of a change in access network configuration, typically system operators will manually drive the system in vehicles loaded with transceivers, meters, and various call analyzers and look for system holes or other flaws or inefficiencies in system coverage and system performance. However, driving a system is inefficient, labor intensive, costly, slow, and time consuming. Furthermore, a system operator must re-drive the system each time access networks are reconfigured in order to determine the impact of the new configuration.
Therefore a need exists for a method and an apparatus that automatically detects system holes or other flaws or inefficiencies in system coverage or system performance and that measures and reports system operating parameters for the areas of flawed or inefficient system coverage or system performance.